I inhrited a Simrad TP10 when I bought my Compass 28, but it's pretty much buggered, and a replacement is on the cards.
How do Simrad and Raymarine stack up for longevity and functionality?
lockie
Navico, a Scandanavian company (not the same Navico that made some top quality marine electronics back in the 90s) owns:-
Brookes and Gatehouse (top of the line but dear as poison),
Simrad (looks like good quality but not cheap),
Navman/North Star (seems cheap but no one has a good word for them)
Eagle and Lowrance (mainly el cheapo for tinnie owners).
Raytheon (yanks??) own Raymarine and Autohelm (some say good, some say crap), probably sit between Simrad and North Star in the quality stakes. Most of their products I have seen do not seem to be very waterproof.
I would go with a Simrad Tiller Pilot because of it's total unit integration and they brag full submersion testing. Cheers Cisco.
^^pretty good website as some those guys seem to have enough cash to try these things out.my thoughts for auto helm are the same to be able to make a cuppa maybe change jib size. just have to get the power put on and i can do these things.
Has anyone interfaced their tiller pilot/autohelm to the GPS or wind? Is it worth the extra money and bother versus a stand-alone unit?
The Simrad TP10 is rated for my boat size/displacement (28 foot/3.25 tonne) but I'm wondering whether to go up the range to a TP22 so I can hook it up via NMEA to GPS (and wind if/when I ever get that)
Cheers, lockie
It really has to be a personal choice based on the type of sailing you do and your budget.
If you can afford it and can get it to work properly, steering to wind or GPS sounds like an attractive proposition.
Keep in mind the purpose of an auto pilot though. It is to relieve the tedium of the tiller for limited amounts of time and hopefully steer a better course than you.
If you are single handing and fall overboard while the boat is on auto steering, it will get to the next waypoint but it is highly unlikely you will.
Commercial fishing vessels fitted with auto steering are required to be fitted with a "Dead Man Button" which if not responded to when the warning light flashes will sound an alarm. If this is not responded to it will cause the vessel to round up.
A "Dead man Button" for yacht auto pilots sounds like a good idea to me.
Being a Personal Life Bouy, Belt, Beacon, Boat???
Or a Pretty Long Bungychord, to sproing you back into the cockpit??
we had a coursemaster that hadnt been used for about 15 years or something by the previous owner, hooked it up to power and had no probs at all with it as long as we calibrated it every few months while on a 10 month trip. great powerful unit. back up service was fantastic also.
easy to hook up with laptop, plotter, wind, the whole lot with nmea as well. we had the 850hd chain drive. olympic 40 grp sloop.
can also be connected a man overboard system like mobi alert to stop the yacht for not too much hard earned.
Nah. That's Raytheon not Raymarine. Same company, different division.
However they were using examples of their military capabilities to advertise their marine products in the yachting magazines i.e. " If our systems can take out a 1,000kmh hostile missile mid flight, imagine what we can do for your navigation."
